


Results

by sisternyxalia13



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 11:01:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisternyxalia13/pseuds/sisternyxalia13
Summary: Prince Leo and Prince Takumi are on the opposite sides of a war--Leo, second son of Garon, is a vampire and has found himself to be in love with the Hoshidan Prince Takumi, a nation that has learned how to destroy vampires with ruthless efficiency. He's been sending the other prince sonnets for months in vain hope. It all leads to a final confrontation.





	Results

“Lord Leo--”  
“I’m going, Niles. Without you.”  
“You could get hurt! I know you’ve been flirting with him for months, but he could still hurt you. Badly.”  
“Niles.”  
“It’s dangerous.”  
“Niles.”  
Leo’s voice had gone firm and he snapped his book shut with both hands, staring at his retainer.  
“I am going. Alone. I can assure you I will not be hurt.”  
“You don’t know him. You know the idea of him.”  
Leo’s jaw tensed and he turned his head.  
That much was true. He had an idea of the archer, not an accurate one, either. Sure, they had conversed, but never on positive terms. Going out there was a large risk. No. It wasn’t just large. Massive. Gargantuan. If Xander knew, he’d commit Leo for treason.  
“I am going alone. To take you with me is to risk your life further than I am comfortable with, Niles.”  
The dark-skinned male locked eyes on Leo’s face, and Niles crossed both arms. He couldn’t tell Leo what to do--Leo was royalty, he was the retainer. He knew that he mattered to his lord, but his lord mattered to him.  
“Yes, and as your retainer it’s my job to keep you safe. If I get injured, then I am injured.”  
Leo exhaled and turned his head sharply to the side. Leo didn’t see the value in himself to let Niles be hurt over something like that. Niles was his closest friend, his confidante. Sure, he’d allowed him to pursue the Hoshidan prince, but he was rightfully cautious about an in-person meeting. Leo crossed his arms.  
“No, Niles. I choose where and who I meet with. I can take my life into my own hands.”  
The prince stood, looking more agitated than he had before.  
“My Lord--”  
“I cannot have your life on my conscience. My life means little in the scheme of things, royalty or no.”  
“But it does! It does have meaning”  
“It doesn’t, Niles. Elise could wield Brynhildr if given the opportunity. Xander does not need me--I might be a strategist but I am hardly an essential tactician: That’s what we have the Robins for. Camilla has been functionally useless since we lost Corrin. If things go unwell, then I will not be missed in the world.”  
Niles expression went, for once, angry. He knew that his lord could be moody, but to devalue his life so far?  
“And what of me, what of Odin? Don’t you matter to us? Don’t we matter to you?”  
Leo paused, looked to his feet, “You matter too much to me to let you be hurt--and regardless of what happens to me, you would be well taken care of. Please. I must do this alone, Niles. Let me. I promise you I will not be reckless.”  
“You never are, but--”  
“Niles.”  
Leo put an emphasis on the name that suggested that he was tired. That the conversation was over. That he would no longer be discussing this with his retainer. Niles sighed. Lord Leo could be absolutely impossible.  
“...What should I tell your brother, if he asks?”  
Leo paused in his half-step toward his room.  
“...Tell him that I am buried deep in the stacks, and that I do not wish to be disturbed.”

\--

Oh, I’ll show him!  
Takumi tied his hair up, pulled on his gloves, made sure that his throat was covered. Fujin-Yumi was tight in his grip. His moccasins would keep him from making too much noise. He’d snipe the heart right out of that pretentious, pig-headed prince and never have to deal with him again.  
What an idiot, too. Arranging to meet with someone who’s going to kill him. I’ll stake him right there. I’ll shoot his heart out. I’ll fill him full of arrows. He’ll become the world’s largest quiver.  
But some part of him wasn’t so sure.  
Even as he slipped out of his window and scaled down the wall, some part of him wondered if it was alright to attack if the other prince was offering a hand of peace.  
Sure, he’d sent him sonnets but… Maybe the guy didn’t know how to talk to people? Maybe vampires were confused about how you were supposed to interact with mortal men so… they wrote baffling poetry?  
Some deep, confused part of Takumi was flattered and loved the attention. Loved that someone found him beautiful and vibrant and… Capable of being loved, even if it came from a Nohrian...  
And Takumi wasn’t so sure he was capable of being loved.  
Sure, he knew that people had crushes on him. His siblings and retainers cared about him… But he would always be playing second-fiddle to Ryoma. He would always be less because of Ryoma. If someone loved him…  
But he knew that vampires couldn’t love.  
Could they?  
The last time he’d interacted with Prince Leo… Well, he hadn’t thought the prince capable of mercy, either. Every book and story he’d read poised the undead as creatures without souls. That they had no mercy, no love, no care. Nohr had always picked at their borders and its nobility didn’t care for its people… Or was that just what they were shown from the outside?  
He’d heard from a girl that they’d granted asylum to that the royal siblings themselves were not cruel. That even Crown Prince Xander, for all his sternness, was a gentle and forgiving soul when it came to certain wrongs… Harsh and unforgiving on other matters. She had made the siblings sound like fair individuals wrapped up in something too big for them.  
But there were more of them than there were of Garon, so why did they not rebel?  
It was something Takumi couldn’t wrap his head around.  
But… What she said coincided with what he understood of Prince Leo.  
That last personal encounter, the masquerade.. The prince knew that Takumi was there to kill him, and yet… He let Takumi go.  
He let him go, let him escape into the night.  
What kind of monster does that? Lets their prey go when it’s so easy to catch them. How stupid could someone be?  
Takumi didn’t know.  
His feet made contact with the garden path and he sprinted for the wall, scaled it with ease, and vaulted over the top to rush into the woods. He was going to meet with Prince Leo and kill him. That was the plan. He knew he couldn’t deviate from it.  
\--

Leo ran over the sonnets in his head. How foolish, he thought, to put his feelings on such a display.  
Nerves filled him up to the brim and threatened to eviscerate him from the inside. Part of him knew that this was incredibly dangerous, but he had to know. He had to know if Prince Takumi would ever accept his feelings. He had to know if the sonnets had moved him at all. If he too consumed the archer’s waking and sleeping thoughts.  
How foolish, he thought.  
At first it had just been an elaborate sort of mockery. That he would pick on the other and perhaps create weak points to use in battle. What had started as mockery steadily became something else. No.  
It was always something else. Takumi was all Leo could think about. Takumi and his smoldering eyes and that set expression. Takumi and the way his mouth worked and the way he was fluid in his movement, firm sometimes, graceful in others.  
Leo looked to the side, sat with dignity, and tried to force the blush out of his cheeks. His back straight, hands resting in his lap. His back end was starting to ache for a cushion. Rocks aren’t exactly comfortable places to sit after all.  
Nature, really, was not Leo’s most prized thing, but he enjoyed trees and water and he would want no more beautiful place to die. This clear was his secret. Borderline sacred, if he confessed it. After all, there is nothing more serene than a mirror-pool of water and the echo of trees and the sky in its depths. Some part of him hoped that the scenery would quell the fire in his veins. It did not.  
Leo thought about the sonnets again.  
All of them compared Takumi to the deadly rays of the sun.  
Told him that he was beautiful, because Takumi was beautiful.  
Eventually, Leo had worked in subtle ways to tell him that he loved him… Or that he was in love with him, or the idea of him.  
He worked from images, ideas in memory, sound, light, the imagined scent. Footsteps on the earth, a steady heartbeat, a subtle breath with the release of an arrow.  
Leo opened his eyes partway. A heartbeat, approaching. There were footsteps too, ungodly cautious, timid about their placement. Lingering on these sounds, Leo closed his eyes.  
They were coming from behind--No, he knew it was Takumi. There was no need to be vague.  
There was another moment or two before the other’s footfalls came closer, and then the light of something brighter than the moonlight penetrated the darkness of his vision. The thin membrane of an eyelid could not completely block out the glow of Fujin-Yumi as it was drawn. Leo did not turn to face Takumi just yet.  
“You’ve had about thirty seconds or more to shoot me. Longer, if your range of visibility is as good as I think it is… So then, why have you not shot me?”  
Leo didn’t dare turn around. He didn’t want to imagine the image of hate on Takumi’s face, let alone see it.  
How do you, Leo began to himself, tell your worst enemy and rival that you love them? Do they love you back? Do they tell you that your love is doomed? Does he say nothing and kill you before you can speak?  
“I want to be able to see your face when I do it. Turn around. Look at me.”  
Takumi’s voice had gone commanding, and Leo had to suppress a shiver. That… he liked that.  
Leo had not come prepared to fight. He had snatched up Brynhildr out of habit but… something told him not to wear armor. No. He knew not to wear armor. If this was going to be in good faith… And if Takumi killed him, Leo wanted the other to know that it had been him who had done this. That he would have to live with it on his conscience. If Takumi did not… If things… If things went as Leo desperately wanted them to, then Takumi would see this as a sign of trust.  
And so, Leo stood, hands behind his back, and turned to face him. His clothes draped off of his form with a comfortable ease.  
Takumi had to take a moment to consider the other’s appearance. No armor, but still dressed smartly. His pants were a little dusty because he’d been sitting on a rock, but otherwise he was trim. The Hoshidan prince narrowed his eyes.  
Was he wearing makeup? Was the second prince of Nohr wearing makeup?  
Weird.  
Still, he pushed his eyebrows together… The other had Brynhildr near him, but he wasn’t dressed for battle or reaching for the tome. The image quelled him. Did Prince Leo always make this sort of effort to look beautiful and take on a disarming appearance? Was this casual for the prince? Takumi had to admit that he looked just as good out of armor as he did in it (something that irritated him to a great degree).  
Slowly, carefully, Takumi lowered Fujin-Yumi. That cool expression only shifted slightly--Leo raised his eyebrows only a fraction. Everything about him, Takumi could tell, was tightly controlled. An image that he wanted to project. He wondered, briefly, if Prince Leo was like him. If he too put on airs, if he pretended to be something different. And then he opened his mouth. Ugh.  
“...Thank you. Let’s get to business, shall we? I hear it from one of my retainers that you hate my poetry.”  
“Yeah. It’s pretentious and horrible.”  
“Perhaps I am aware of how pretentious it is. I wrote it, after all. I can be quite pretentious.”  
Takumi furrowed his brow and crossed his arms, “Why do you keep sending it to me? What if people read that? They’re going to think you’re in love with me. You’re a prince of Nohr, you should be trying to kill me.”  
Leo’s expression moved into an amused smirk. Takumi had to admit, again, that the Nohrian’s face was annoyingly attractive.  
“Yes, why indeed would I write poetry professing affection, and then send it to you via one of my retainers, if not for the love of you? To tease you, possibly, but that implies some sort of loving affection.”  
“Vampires can’t feel love.”  
“And who told you that? A terrible movie produced somewhere in Valm?”  
“...No.”  
Yes.  
Leo’s eyes locked with Takumi’s. Their stare was matched in intensity.  
“...Regardless of where you got the idea, I suppose that I should point out the obvious. You’ll forgive me for not being blunt... I rather like wordplay.”  
Leo moved forward, but only slightly, removing one hand from behind his back to examine the nails.  
“You see, I didn’t start this endeavour as a means to woo you. The first sonnets were mockery. After a particularly intense battle, I must confess, all I could think of was besting you. If I could not defeat you in battle then I would defeat you with words. I didn’t think it would be much of a challenge to simply tell you off with a note, so I wrote the most annoyingly difficult form of poetry I could muster. However, no matter what I did, everything I wrote ended up scalding me with passion I didn’t know I had. I thought of you always. I couldn’t get you out of my head. You are akin to the sun for me, you know. Deadly, burning, something I’ve always wanted but could never have, something I’ve always dreamed of. I thought I might share the pain, as it were. Distribute the wealth.”  
The wheels turned in Takumi’s head. Started to mock him and then turned to something else. Well, that was certainly a turn if he’d ever seen one. When he next spoke, his words were slow so that he could process them coming out of his own mouth. This whole thing was absurd.  
“You wrote these sonnets… because you’re in love with me.”  
“I did. In fact, I believe that’s how this whole conversation started. Me being in love with you.”  
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. We’re not even on the same side.”  
“I know.”  
“And you’ve only met me a handful of times. I tried to kill you.”  
“I know.”  
“I could kill you right here!”  
“I know.”  
Leo met Takumi’s eyes and then averted his gaze, opening his mouth to speak again, “I suppose… I had hoped that you felt the same attraction I did. The same unexplainable... feeling. It was that sort of horrible swelling in my chest when I thought of you. And Gods, it was torture. It was like I was on fire.”  
Exhaling, Leo turned his head to meet Takumi’s eyes. Takumi didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone look so… desperate.  
“You’re all I can think about. I think of you when I go to bed and when I go into battle, and I think of you when I’m trying to read. Do you know how annoying it is to be thinking about you and what you might think of a novel in the middle of the novel? It completely ruins the suspension of disbelief. I had to get you out of my head somehow. It didn’t help. I made it worse.”  
Takumi’s face screwed up, his eyes narrowed. Leo looked intense, flustered, and the Hoshidan prince assumed that the bloom of purple on Leo’s face was blush.  
He wanted to say something, but he was at a loss for words. The other prince’s eyes were searching his face. Leo decided to speak again.  
“I wrote all these sonnets to try to get you out of me. These are about you, for you. You’re an infection, a brand somewhere in my skin and I’ve been aching for you for so many of my waking hours that I don’t even want to acknowledge the ones taken while I was asleep as well. You are the sun--deadly and burning and I love you.”  
So the other prince… He really was in love with him. He honestly didn’t expect him to be this insistent.. No, this passionate. Passion like that couldn’t be faked… Could it?  
Regardless of that, Takumi couldn’t even fathom how much you had to love someone to write poetry about them. He couldn’t even begin to understand how much it had to ache--Except he did. He himself wasn’t so great with words--that was Ryoma’s job. Anything that meant he had to express himself on paper or in speech just didn’t work with Takumi. Then he paused his train of thought. Was the Nohrian really winning him over?  
No. He was coming to realize that it was something else, something similar to Leo's obsession.  
Takumi admitted that before he knew who wrote the sonnets, he knew it would be someone from Nohr because of all the flowery language. And he knew that it was someone that cherished him deeply--even then he recognized that using words like this to express love was a laborious task. Someone that understood him in a bizarre way from just a glance. Someone that loved him.  
He wanted so much to be loved. To be someone’s first and most important to someone who wasn’t obligated to be around him like his retainers or his siblings.  
Takumi didn’t expect to be Prince Leo’s first and favorite. It baffled him. But he didn’t hate it. He didn’t hate that Leo loved him. In fact, he--  
And Takumi had to admit that their battles were never--He never could hit Leo. He was sure that Leo had lain a curse on him, that he had done something to make it so that the archer-prince couldn’t lay a finger on him. Sometimes Takumi even hindered himself--he fixated on Leo. He wanted a fight where he could win, he could prove that the prince he was obsessed with meant nothing to him. That Leo was the dirt under his heels! That his beautiful, horrible face would be cold and dead and-- and--!  
But if Leo were dead… Takumi…  
The Hoshidan prince’s face screwed up.  
He thought about, quickly, how Leo said that he was all the other could think about. That Takumi had consumed his thoughts. And then… Wasn’t it the same for himself? Did he not allow Leo to consume his waking hours? Did he not spend ages training, pretending that the dummy was Leo’s stupid, beautiful face? Did he not spend hours saying that he would strike the prince dead and then no one else could do it because Takumi wanted that moment for himself. He wanted it to be just him and Prince Leo. A horrible weight settled in his stomach. Takumi’s shoulders hardened. He had to know. He had to be sure.  
“Did you glamour me?”  
The words shattered the terse silence between them. Leo looked up, trying to be cool and calm but his face was still spattered with blush.  
“I beg your pardon?”  
Takumi took two steps forward and took Leo by the front of his shirt, balling his fist in tight. He jerked Leo down to his level.  
“Did. You. Glamour. Me.”  
“When?”  
“You know when.”  
“No. That would be stupid. I could have taken the occasion to do so, but I didn’t. Why would I try to woo someone I could make do my bidding with a word?”  
“I-You--!”  
Takumi’s face went red.  
But...He didn’t hate Leo. Or, at least, he was coming to understand that he didn’t hate Leo at all.  
Oh, the mage could be incredibly insufferable--he was insufferable right now.  
“Me?”  
“How can you be so calm about this?!”  
“Because.”  
“We’re on opposite sides! We can’t be together!”  
A smile crossed Leo’s mouth.  
“That suggests, Takumi, that you’d be interested in us being together.”  
The air sat silent between them. Takumi’s face flushed red and Leo threatened a smirk.  
“Don’t be smug,” the archer scolded, his eyes narrowed. Sure, they didn’t know each other as well as he would like, but he had to admit that there was an attraction. That he was attracted to Prince Leo. That he knew he couldn’t hit him because if he injured the prince… At the time he’d told himself he wanted it to be a single fight between them. That when in battle with the other siblings there was too much happening. That he had to pay more attention to what was going on around him, had to impress. Now it was just them.  
Just them.  
Takumi let go of Leo’s shirt and before the prince could stand upright, he dragged the other down and pressed him into a kiss.  
Leo stood frozen for a solid second before he returned it. They held this position, pressed together in a way that felt almost intoxicating. The Nohrian prince felt Takumi’s warmth, wanted to drink it all up, wanted to swallow it, draped his arms around the other, held him there. The Hoshidan prince was baffled--He liked it. No. He loved it. He wanted more. He loved how the other prince smelled and tasted. Loved the cool contrast to his warmth, loved how he’d stunned Prince Leo, who had otherwise been unflappable before. He had never kissed anyone before, had never thought about kissing anyone before, had never even dreamed that it would be with a man, with the enemy.  
His heart was racing in his ears and he drew back when he needed a breath. His eyes lowered and Takumi uttered a soft curse.  
“...Something the matter?”  
Leo’s voice had taken on a tinge of curiosity… and concern. It was soft. Takumi didn’t know that Nohrians could be soft… not like this.  
“I had to know,” Takumi muttered.  
“...Beg pardon?”  
“I had to know if it was real or not. If what I felt was that I actually liked you, or if it was just me reacting to all your stupid love poems or whatever.”  
“And?”  
Takumi balled one hand into a fist and he pulled Leo down again and held him in another kiss. Leo lingered in this one, reveled in it, listened to the pounding of the other’s heartbeat and the soft breaths he drew in and he let himself get lost for a time.  
And he drew back again.  
“I’ll take that as a positive,” Leo uttered, exhaling a low breath. Takumi really did set all of him on fire. He snatched a glance at the archer’s shy expression as he drew back, saw how his whole face was lit up pink… Oh, he was too adorable.  
Takumi, looking annoyed that his feelings were legitimate, deliberately stared at his feet, “Yeah, whatever. You know this is still a problem, though.”  
Leo exhaled again, allowed himself to stay hunched over Takumi, “I fail to see the issue.”  
“We’re on opposite sides. If our brothers find out, we’re done-for.”  
Leo dipped down, pressing his lips to the other’s cheek, savoring the warmth the blush brought to his face, and then sighed. Takumi was right.  
Pulling himself upright, he straightened out his clothes, smoothed down his hair, fussed with every part of his appearance that he could to sort out his nerves.  
“Then we’ll just have to be careful. Make sure our siblings don’t catch us at it.”  
“How?”  
“...Well, they don’t know we’re here now, do they? I’m sure we can work around them… Xander, as much as I love him, can be incredibly oblivious.”  
Takumi raised an eyebrow, “That doesn’t say much for the future King of Nohr.”  
“Oh, he’ll be an excellent king. He just fails to understand some things out of his scope, that’s all.”  
Leo straightened himself out, went to put his hands behind his back, but Takumi stopped him. The archer traced the line of Leo’s arm, followed it down, and then laced their fingers. Leo seemed, for a moment, taken aback. Then he smiled. Lifting the other’s hand in his, he pressed his lips to their fingers, taking in the warmth. He smelled like earth and the heat of the sun in the air.  
“I think we’ll be just fine, Takumi. Just fine.”


End file.
